Battle for the Solomons

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1943. Hardcover. very good/good. 200 pages, color endpaper maps, edges of DJ have been reinforced with tape, name of former owner written inside front board.The Solomon Islands campaign was a major campaign of the Pacific War of World War II. The campaign began with Japanese landings and occupation of several areas in the British Solomon Islands and Bougainville, in the Territory of New Guinea, during the first six months of 1942. The Japanese occupied these locations and began the construction of several naval and air bases with the goals of protecting the flank of the Japanese offensive in New Guinea, establishing a security barrier for the major Japanese base at Rabaul on New Britain, and providing bases for interdicting supply lines between the Allied powers of the United States and Australia and New Zealand.The Allies, to defend their communication and supply lines in the South Pacific, supported a counteroffensive in New Guinea, isolated the Japanese base at Rabaul, and counterattacked the Japanese in the Solomons with landings on Guadalcanal and small neighboring islands on 7 August 1942. These landings initiated a series of combined-arms battles between the two adversaries, beginning with the Guadalcanal landing and continuing with several battles in the central and northern Solomons, on and around New Georgia Island, and Bougainville Island.In a campaign of attrition fought on land, on sea, and in the air, the Allies wore the Japanese down, inflicting irreplaceable losses on Japanese military assets. The Allies retook some of the Solomon Islands (although resistance continued until the end of the war), and they also isolated and neutralized some Japanese positions, which were then bypassed. The Solomon Islands campaign then converged with the New Guinea campaign. Ira Wolfert (November 1, 1908 - November 24, 1997) was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent and writer.He was born and grew up in New York City. In 1930, he graduated from the Columbia University School of Journalism with a bachelor's degree.He then went to work for the North American Newspaper Alliance from the 1930s through World War II. In 1941, he was aboard the Surcouf when it helped to liberate Saint Pierre and Miquelon. His series of articles about the November 1942 Naval Battle of Guadalcanal won him the Pulitzer Prize for Telegraphic Reporting (International).He wrote non-fiction, including the 1943 bestselling eyewitness account Battle for the Solomons and the 1945 American Guerrilla in the Philippines, which recounts the exploits of Navy officer Iliff David Richardson and was made into a 1950 film of the same name, starring Tyrone Power as Richardson. After the war, he continued to write, including articles for Readers Digest.